‘I’m the new girl,’ she says bouncily, turning right round to face Will and giving it some jazz hands. ‘Got a kindly upper-sixther to show me the bright lights of the town, though.’

Will focuses on his brother, perched on the wing of the car, unsure whether April’s sarcastic tone is in reference to the suggestion of Ebbswick-on-Sea containing even a single bright light, or that Danny’s invitation could be in any way interpreted as an act of kindness.

‘Where should we go?’ she muses out loud.

Will smiles back at her for a moment. ‘It’s …’

April stares at him, waiting. But Will has merely succumbed to the pressure to begin a sentence, trusting that the rest of the words will follow. They haven’t. This is always happening. When will he learn?

‘It’s …’ he says once again.

At some quiet moment in the near future, he’ll reflect on this exchange and carry out a post-mortem, running over every word and gesture in forensic detail, as he often does in the aftermath of a social encounter. At the heart of these investigations lies the big question he can never answer with any certainty: What is it that I’m so afraid of?

Saying something really fucking stupid, that’s part of it for sure. But there’s something deeper. It’s a fear of being seen. Of being outed as weird – the hardest reputation to shift once gained. That’s the furthest conclusion Will is able to reach. If he could only believe he might interact with another human being without the certainty they’ll leave disappointed, amused – repulsed, even – by the encounter, if he could know that’s not how it would end, maybe he’d be OK.

It’s far from just conversations with girls at which Will falls short, although those are perhaps where the struggle is at its most acute. And it’s not because Will fancies those girls, even if his maroon-faced appearance makes it look like he does. In truth, Will doesn’t so much fancy girls as exist in awe of them, considering himself thoroughly unworthy of their attention. He’s two weeks off seventeen, but he long ago accepted that it’s exceptionally unlikely he’ll ever have sex. Sometimes he wonders if he might, in the long-distant future, when he’s thirty or forty perhaps, pay for it – just to find out what it’s all about.

‘What subjects you doing?’ April asks.

‘English, history, physics, photography,’ Will reels off.

‘Snap,’ she says, grinning. ‘Be seeing you in photography. One of my five.’ She does a disgusted face.

‘Five?’

‘Beasting myself, aren’t I? Figure if I keep myself busy, no one’ll notice I’ve got no mates.’

You’ll have friends soon enough, Will thinks. You must be seriously clever, he also thinks. But he doesn’t voice either of these thoughts, for fear they’ll sound like an attempt at a compliment.